The present invention relates generally to the field of facsimile telecommunications, and more specifically, to the field of services provided by, and methods of gaining access to, facsimile store and forward facilities (F-SAFF's).
The field of facsimile telecommunications is now a relatively old field of technology and currently includes an immense number of active facsimile communication devices. Nonetheless, the number of facsimile machines in use throughout the world continues to increase very rapidly. Many business people view the ability to transfer information through facsimile communication as an integral part of their businesses. While there are undoubtedly many reasons for the widespread acceptance of facsimile technology, one apparent reason for this success is the striking simplicity of the basic operation of a facsimile machine. Many people find it very easy to use and learn to use the basic operation of a conventional facsimile machine since such operation usually only encompasses inserting a document into the facsimile machine, dialing a telephone number, and pressing a start key. Without a doubt, such a procedure is much less complicated than the operating procedures of many electronic devices in use today.
While conventional basic facsimile technology has existed for many years now, the conventional facsimile method has always had several rather serious drawbacks. While often faster, less expensive, and more convenient than other forms of information transfer, such as the postal service or courier document delivery services, the conventional facsimile communication method suffers from many old and new problems which may delay, prevent or complicate facsimile transfer of information. Of all these problems, the unavailability of facsimile machines and intended recipients are perhaps the most serious. In an ideal sense, if every person carried a personal facsimile machine which was always able to simultaneously send and receive facsimile information, which answered to a telephone number known by everyone else, and which was continuously monitored by the owner, the problems of facsimile machine unavailability and intended recipient unavailability would not be such serious problems. Unfortunately, since such is not the case, facsimile machine users often experience many frustrating difficulties with basic facsimile communication.
For instance, it is often very frustrating for a person to dial a destination telephone number and receive either a busy signal or no response at all. The sender often wastes considerable amounts of time continuing to initiate telephone calls in an all to common "hit or miss" process. Such a situation can likewise be very frustrating for an intended recipient who is expecting to receive facsimile information or is unaware of a problem with the destination facsimile machine, such as a paper-out situation. In addition, facsimile machines are often effectively unavailable because of problems arising during the actual electronic transfer of facsimile information. In other words, it is not uncommon for senders of facsimile information to make mistakes in dialing destination facsimile telephone numbers, for switching equipment in public and private networks to fail or misdirect a call, or even for facsimile information to be overwritten in facsimile machines with limited amounts of storage memory.
Furthermore, intended recipients are often effectively unavailable because of difficulties encountered during the physical phase of transferring a facsimile hard copy output from a destination facsimile machine to the intended recipient. Unfortunately, it is often the case that (i) the hard copy is ignored for a long period of time in a facsimile tray, in an employee mail slot, on an intermediate employee's desk, or in a variety of other places, (ii) the hard copy is mistakenly directed to, or obtained by, an employee other than the intended recipient, or (iii) the hard copy is mistakenly thrown away. These are only a few of the reasons the physical phase of transferring a facsimile hard copy to an intended recipient often renders the recipient at least temporarily effectively unavailable to basic facsimile communication. Furthermore, to magnify the problem, senders often incorrectly assume that successful facsimile communication has taken place by relying on so-called "confirmation" printouts from the sending facsimile machines even though such indications do not confirm communication with the intended recipient person but merely suggest that information has been transferred to some machine somewhere. Moreover, many of the previously-identified problems are intensified and create additional frustration when information to be communicated is especially important, urgent, or confidential.
In addition, intended recipients are often physically separated from their normal facsimile machines when they desire to receive facsimile information or when a sender desires to send such information. Achieving such a delivery of information can often be very frustrating, requiring several telephone calls and the immediate assistance of several additional people. A sender may also desire to make facsimile information available to an unlimited number of unknown (effectively unavailable) potential recipients. It could obviously be very frustrating and expensive to provide a staff of people to receive and service telephone calls from desirous recipients.
Besides experiencing problems related to recipient and facsimile machine unavailability, users of basic facsimile methods often send the same facsimile information to more than one destination. Successive attempts to send the same information to multiple destinations can occupy a facsimile telephone line for long periods of time. This practice of manually broadcasting information to multiple destinations only compounds the facsimile machine unavailability problem. In addition, users of basic facsimile methods often create additional unavailable times sending multiple facsimile transmissions which include standard portions, such as cover sheets or other standard information. Another problem with conventional facsimile communication is unauthorized outbound transmissions. In many cases, long distance bills can become especially high with uncontrolled usage. Yet another area in which conventional facsimile communication could be improved is the frequently manual stage of retyping information received through facsimile communications.
Systems and methods have been offered in the past for addressing a few of the issues and problems identified above. Some advanced, more expensive, facsimile machines have been designed to, among other functions, provide a limited amount of memory for storing a limited amount of incoming facsimile information in a paper-out situation or storing outgoing facsimile information for retrying unavailable destinations or broadcasting the information to more than one destination. Unfortunately, in addition to obvious memory constraints, these advanced facsimile machines are often much more expensive than basic facsimile machines. Also, and more importantly, the additional functionality often creates more time in which the facsimile machine is unavailable for receiving or sending other facsimile information. Moreover, many additional functions, are simply too complicated for many people to use or learn to use. For instance, some facsimile machines are capable of providing output to personal computers which can be programmed to perform optical character recognition (OCR) on the facsimile information, thereby decreasing time spent manually retyping the information. In addition to such procedures being complicated, difficult to learn and time consuming in and of themselves, the cost of acquiring these more expensive facsimile machines and sophisticated OCR software is often very prohibitive despite characteristically poor output quality.
Another proposed solution includes the use of remotely located facsimile store and forward facilities (F-SAFF's). Various types of enhanced facsimile services have been offered by these facilities to combat many of the above problems. Enhanced facsimile services have included, among others, a facsimile overflow service for receiving calls directed to or from unavailable facsimile machines, a facsimile mailbox service similar to the more common voice mail service but for facsimile information, a facsimile broadcast service for distributing facsimile information to multiple destinations, and a fax on demand service for allowing public access to facsimile information. While these enhanced facsimile services have addressed some of the above problems of conventional basic facsimile methods, problems still remain, including new problems created by the services themselves. Consequently, F-SAFF's have not yet received widespread acceptance.
With many of the enhanced facsimile services, a user is required to dial into a facility and traverse a set of voice menus, often requiring a personal identification number (PIN), before being allowed to transmit the facsimile information. Thus, users often spend large amounts of time using and learning to use complicated procedures. In addition, the initializing stages of activating the services are often just as complicated and time consuming. Another major reason F-SAFF's are not as popular as many had hoped is that a user is often required to change or add one or more new telephone numbers to utilize the services. In other words, to use many of the services, a user would often be forced to acquire and distribute new stationary, business cards, etc., in addition to learning new telephone numbers. In addition, depending on whether the service provider is a Regional Bell Operating Company, a long distance provider, or other class of provider, the ability to deliver and bill for delivering facsimile information across long distance lines and provide other specialized services frequently presents additional complications for the service provider and the user.
There is, therefore, a need in the industry for a system which addresses these and other related, and unrelated, problems.